Postcard from New York I May 15 -21, 2023
Here is our weekly Postcard from New York, in collaboration with Clio Art Fair!
In this article, we will explore some of the highlights of this week, looking for the most interesting and inspiring exhibitions and events in NYC.
Let's discover our selection of NYC-based art events!
1. In Museums
Missing Generations: Photographs by Jill Freedman
@Derfner Judaica Museum
March 19–July 16, 2023
The exhibition marks the eightieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Not previously exhibited, the images in Missing Generations: Photographs by Jill Freedman capture the milestone events that took place beginning with commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, including the return of many survivors for observances in Warsaw and at Auschwitz.
Freedman went to Poland in April 1993 to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. As she wrote, she undertook the journey as a pilgrim “to mourn the dead, to honor them,” along with the “survivors, their children, old soldiers and witnesses.” She returned to many of these sites the next year after receiving a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation (APF). Founded in 1965, the APF supports the work of journalists. In her application for the fellowship, Freedman wrote that she wanted to expand her project. She sought to meet survivors and document their “gatherings, their faces, their stories, their interactions.” Freedman noted the urgency of this endeavor at a time when, once again, “ethnic cleansing” was being perpetrated in Europe and “historical revisionists” were denying the Holocaust had ever happened.
2. In Galleries
Michaela Yearwood-Dan | Some Future Time Will Think of Us
@Marianne Boesky Gallery
April 6 - May 20, 2023
Marianne Boesky Gallery presents Michaela Yearwood-Dan's second solo exhibition with the gallery. The new paintings, ceramics, works on paper, and site-specific mural and sound installation embody Yearwood-Dan's ongoing investigation of contemporary culture and millennial political concerns, as well as her desire to build spaces of queer community, abundance, and joy.
Yearwood-Dan (b. 1994; London, UK) has developed a singular visual language that draws on a diverse range of influences, including Blackness, queerness, femininity, healing rituals, and carnival culture. Moving freely between painting, drawing, and ceramics, Yearwood-Dan embeds botanical motifs and diaristic meditations within brushy, swirling forms and heavy drips of paint. From the monumental scale of her paintings to the more intimate scale of her ceramics and works on paper, Yearwood-Dan's practice frequently reflects an inviting domesticity. Resisting any singular definition of identity, the artist explores the possibilities of creating spaces-physical, pastoral, metaphorical-that allow for unlimited and unbounded ways of being.
3. In Brooklyn
LOOKING NORTH
@Yi Gallery
18 MAR - 27 MAY 2023
United by a process of abstraction and poetics, this group of work cherishes a look of open-endedness in composition, manifested through the textured surfaces and torn-looking raw edges–an absorbing dance of eventual humility. Wrapped in a fundamental simplicity, with the hugeness surrounding a circular motif, the sculptures, installation and canvases reflect an ascending energy. The three artists trace their artistic and personal roots back to the northern parts of their countries, or the hemisphere, geographically spanning Scandinavia, Northeast America and Mexico. Through utilizing raw, sourced, natural and industrial materials, the artists engage in themes of artifact, deterioration of landscape, generational divide, presence and continuity. Seen in its totality, the exhibition invites a renewed thinking of the “body in the landscape”, as well as the responsibility and representation within our personal and collective history in relation to the changing climate.
4. Outside
Pamela Rosenkranz: Old Tree
@High Line
May 2023 – Fall 2024
For the third High Line Plinth commission, Rosenkranz presents Old Tree, a bright red-and-pink sculpture that animates myriad historical archetypes wherein the tree of life connects heaven and earth. The tree’s sanguine color resembles the branching systems of human organs, blood vessels, and tissue, inviting viewers to consider the indivisible connection between human and plant life.
Old Tree evokes metaphors for the ancient wisdom of human evolution as well as a future in which the synthetic has become nature. On the High Line—a contemporary urban park built on a relic of industry—Old Tree raises questions about what is truly “artificial” or “natural” in our world. Made of man-made materials and standing at a height of 25 feet atop the Plinth, it provides a social space, creating shade while casting an ever-changing, luminous aura amid New York’s changing seasons.
Pamela Rosenkranz creates sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations that reflect on the human need to anthropomorphize our surroundings in order to understand them. In doing so, she investigates the codes through which people give meaning to the natural world. Her projects center synthetic materials created in the image of nature: a swimming pool filled with viscous fluid, collections of mineral water bottles filled with silicone, or a kitchen faucet streaming water colored with E131 “sky blue” synthetic dye.